I have never had sex.

The answer of course is you don't. So be prepared (together) for giving people the incentive to stfu about you & the person you care for.

In conclusion: religion fucks you up.

Afterwards I didn't feel as if I'd gone through some life-changing experience, but I did feel a weight lifted from my shoulders and was much more chipper over all. Not just cos of the sex but cos of the romance too. I had, ahem, frolicked, as it were, with a couple of girls before. If they'd been up for it I probably would have gone the whole hog, but can genuinely say I'm glad I didn't cos there was no real connection there other than booze and desperation. I suppose it gave me some, er, work experience, but you learn on the job pretty quickly anyway, and if she's any kind of decent person she'll be understanding.
I'm not saying you should expect fireworks or you have to be madly in love, but it's so much nicer if you at least like each other and feel comfortable.

There's still a part of me that thinks sex is bad and dirty. I think people who think sex is perfectly natural and open and beautiful are the weird ones.

a; you can be in love with the person

b; you can also not be!

Neither is key.

Louis, I'm just guessing from the responses you gave to my questions, but I can see one problem you might be having, and you can tell me if this rings true to you:

You're starting relationships the wrong way. I mean, all the things you describe as some kind of pre-kissing courtship are activities that are known to most people as "making friends." You're trying to become close to people before you sort out your romantic interest, which is also known as "making friends." And this will work against you, because once you've made a friend, you're looking at a much bigger challenge -- instead of just starting a romantic relationship, you're trying to convert an existing, comfortable friendship into one. And that can work, sometimes, but it's like building a covered bridge and then trying to make it into a house: it's way easier to just build a house in the first place.

The alternative isn't just to go to some "meat market" and pick someone up. The normal alternative would be this: next time you go out with friends and meet new people, if you meet some girl you think is attractive, and who you enjoy talking to in a friendly way for an hour or two ... ask her out. Not as a "friend," and not to build some platonic relationship while you find out more about her: ask her out on a date, as a potential romantic interest. You will have way more success with this than trying to turn your established friends into lovers. And then you can work from there in largely the same way, except that any intimacy you build from there will be understood as romantic intimacy, not as friendship.

I want to speculate a little on why you don't do this already, so please remember that I'm just guessing here. But: the risks are higher for this sort of thing. Asking someone to do something in a friendly way doesn't carry that much risk of rejection; asking someone on a date does. And if there's no rejection, it means getting to know someone via a process that's far messier and more fraught than being casual-friendly and figuring everything about them out that way. But ... it's just kinda what you have to do. You're not going to know everything about the person. You might not even turn out to like the person that much. She might not like you. Chances are, you'll break up. You kinda have to bite the bullet and do it anyway. And the good news is that you apparently have friends, and your friend relationships will go on as normal even as you try different things and maybe get into messes and rejection on the romantic side.

Just try to keep those things more separate than you currently are. Within a day or two of meeting people, try to think about whether you want to initiate a friend-relationship or a romantic relationship. I totally understand that this is inconvenient, because you don't know them enough to decide, but those are kind of the breaks. You might be wrong, and have a failed relationship with someone who might have been a great friend. But it sounds like right now you're doing the reverse, and having friendships with people who might have been great girlfriends. You just have to make a blind bet on which way you want to try things, and see what happens. (And if it makes you feel any better, it's probably easier to convert someone you dated for a couple weeks to a friend than it is to convert a close friend to a lover.)

no way, the potential for a lousis jagger "Huzzah! Huzzah! I have achieved poppage!" thread in a few months is his one redeeming quality. that thread will be a monster instant classic.

All it takes is confidence. Making myself seem wonderfully friendly and interesting will only make friends; taking the plunge is something else entirely. I've asked girls out for dinner before, but never raised the stakes to describing (or treating) it as a date.

Oh, and Aimless, I've spent the last 5 years looking for someone to love. I normally get hung up on certain girls, often think I love them, and am mortified when it doesn't happen. Something needs to click into place.

Some of my behavioural traits betray my unsoiled state, I'll admit. I mean, I've publicly tooth-drummed ffs, nobody with a girlfriend would show off his tooth-drumming skills!

Oh, and the thread (I worked this out earlier today, in fact) is going to be called, simply, 'POPPAGE'.

xxpost

Yup. If you spend long getting friendly before you bring "I want to be on you" into it, then you're kind of betraying whatever friendship you've established beforehand. She's gonna think you were sweaty-palming it all along (which you were), and it might make things difficult for a while.

And you know this, that's why you (probably) never reveal the sexual tension you've built into yr. "friendships", thus sparing yrself the ugliness. And possible blowjobs.

Moral: you have to be creepy. You have to make your fuck-want clear from the beginning, even if you choose to go smooth and disguise it as "romantic interest". I understand that the romantic interest route is very popular.

I didn't get fucked, didn't get kissed until I was in my 20s. Drove me fucking crazy. I obsessed about it and about my own sexual loserdom to the point of incapacitating mental illness and listening to Swans records. Then I got drunk, hooked up with a lovely and similarly enabled girl, and ... well, let's discreetly draw the blinds on the indiscretions of the past.

Disagree that getting laid is not a curative, though. It is a curative. I never worried about it after that, and never had trouble making my intentions clear to girls I liked.

*shudder*

How would you go about doing this?

You have to make your fuck-want, clear from the beginning,

aiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Thought it'd be clear that "fuck-want" was the way those ashamed of their sexual interest tend to demonize it.

Guess not.

The point I'm trying to make is that it's a bad idea to make hide sexual interest in "friendships" and then to crucify yourself about it over time.